Thoughts

The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn has written about how our denial of impermanence is what makes anger and resentment possible. We think we have unlimited time, and therefore the luxury of being mad at someone, or furthering some feud. “If we spend twenty four hours being angry at our beloved,” he wrote, “it is because we are ignorant …

Look at all the stuff that happens around you. The neighbor whose house burns down. The friend who comes down with a rare disorder. The actor whose career suddenly ends. The rock solid marriage that ends in divorce. Your competitor who is bankrupted by a patent lawsuit. The previously peaceful country that descends into civil …

I’m a small government guy, however, it’s sadly apparent that the United States of America is paralyzed with political indecision over something the State of Israel figured out more than 40 years ago: all schools should have mandated security features and active shooter protocols. The horrific scene in Parkland, and the upsetting videos broadcast from …

While watching TV advertising, I often get the feeling I’m being lectured to. The Super Bowl was a series of lectures with this message: “As often as we’ve tried to educate you people out there in flyover country, you remain resistant to our efforts to civilize you. We continue to detect traces of racism, misogyny, …

Some people know how to quit a book as soon as they stop liking it. But many of us feel some sort of completist pressure to stick with every book we start, even when reading for pleasure. We struggle through stuff we don’t actually like, and so we’re less likely to pick up the book …

Seneca poses a funny hypothetical. If you stopped the average successful, wealthy Roman patriarch as he left his home in the morning and asked him, “Where are you going? What are you doing today?” Their answer would be something like, “I don’t know…stuff.” They knew they were supposed to be doing things and saw their …

“This too shall pass” was Lincoln’s favorite saying, one he once said was applicable in any and every situation one could encounter. His plodding patience and stamina was an incredible virtue during the US Civil War, a terrible war that would call on Lincoln to be both forceful and forgiving, violent yet compassionate. Lincoln’s real …

Alinsky tactics. Their entire philosophy is to provoke a reaction so they can use it against you and regulate you even more. 1. “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.“ Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and …

When the coliseum was built in 80 A.D. it was one of the most incredible architectural achievements in human history. 1,938 years later, time has taken its toll—its most recent major restoration was at a cost of nearly $30 million and took several years. When the famous Marcus Aurelius equestrian statue was first assembled out of bronze, …

What we see in the writings of the Stoics is that they strove to ensure that their ambition never corrupted their self-awareness. We rarely see ego and self-glorification in their pages, in fact, we usually find the opposite: meditations on how to improve, reminders that they were still human and flawed. This lack of ego was also …